


Stories Writ in Blood & Flesh

by PiercdFromWithin



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Death, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, Loss, Multi, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-01-24 01:35:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 12,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1586837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PiercdFromWithin/pseuds/PiercdFromWithin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some years before A Game of Thrones, Roose & Bethany Bolton had a daughter.  Due to his wife's crumbling mental state, she refused to believe the baby was not stillborn.  Roose brought the child to live with Bethany's sister, Barbrey Dustin.  Now that his wife and only trueborn son are dead, Roose and his bastard, Ramsay, go to recover the girl.  Hilarity does not ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Roose I

**Author's Note:**

> All characters and settings belong to George RR Martin, and even my Alys Bolton would not exist without his influence. I receive no gain from the use of his works except my own pleasure.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roose reminisces over his dead wife's body, then makes a life-altering decision for a girl in Barrowton.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing starts slowly. I'm trying to get a feel for the characters, get into their minds a bit before any action happens. That's why I've kept these early POV chapters short. I want to know where they're coming from, as that will influence their later actions. Sorry if you find it a bit boring in their heads! Patience, dears. The tags & rating are there for a VERY good reason.

Roose I

Lady Bethany Ryswell Bolton died of a consuming fever in the bed she had shared with her husband through all of the miscarriages, still-births, and the death of her beautiful, accomplished, polished, courteous, and almost-perfect son, Domeric at only 19 that filled her marriage to the lord of the Dreadfort. Considering that only months had passed since her only son born alive had died of a sickness of the bowels (both Lady Bethany and Lord Roose Bolton agreed he was probably poisoned by Roose's own bastard son), even her subtle, precise, and completely ungiven to fancies husband knew she truly had died of a broken heart.

Roose was fond of his silent, organized, proper wife, feeling that they complimented each other. As he stood over her cooling body, he reminisced on their comfortable silences, her ability to run the daily managerial requirements of the Dreadfort, and her odd silence in the marriage bed. The servants might spread rumors to the townsfolk that she was monstrous and cruel, that her cold was a mask for brutality, but he had valued her pragmatism. But the yearly losses of their children had stripped her of swathes of herself, much as he stripped chosen people of their skins, despite flaying having been long outlawed. Roose had been unable to comfort her. He was willing, but he knew that he lacked the capacity.

He was not pleased that her death, so shortly after his only proper heir's death, left him with such unpalatable choices for inheriting his legacy. For the eighth time, he found himself regretting that she had learned of the bastard he had fathered on that wretched woman, and for the thousandth time he wished he had dispatched of her as he had all of his other dalliances. When he thought about it, eyeing her wasted corpse dispassionately, her mental decline began when she heard the rumors and went to see the boy for herself. Ramsay Snow had been a lad of three, already possessing coarser features than his father, but the child's clear, pale grey eyes left her no doubt as to his parentage. She had been late in a pregnancy at the time, but she still threw herself upon the lord of the Dreadfort in a rage when she returned. Roose almost smiled at the memory - his first memory of seeing his wife show passion after fifteen years of marriage, and it turned out to be his only such memory of Bethany Ryswell Bolton.

That pregnancy had caused him to feel pain. A daughter, one Bethany insisted had been stillborn, one whom she had refused to see or to nurse, was the result. Roose was still perturbed by her reaction fifteen years later. 

His face betraying no emotion, he turned to the maester, saying in a whispery voice that caused the elderly man to lean forward to hear, that he should prepare her for placement in the crypt below the dungeons. Turning abruptly on his heel, he walked down the hallways of his ancestral home, deep in thought, toward the mean chambers he had reserved for his bastard. Without knocking, he opened the door and gazed impassively upon the boy who was obliviously skinning one of the barn cats. When he addressed his son, his soft voice bore an air of command. "Ramsay, my wife has passed." He paused, a significant look in his frozen eyes. Roose Bolton was please to see the fear build in his bastard's eyes then spread through his ungainly body. But, so it was with bad blood. Still, the boy had his uses, and a certain low cunning his father almost appreciated. "You must get dressed for a ride, but this will be no hunt. We are going to retrieve your trueborn sister."


	2. Alys I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alys Snow sees riders, and learns she has been living with lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize my introductory chapters are so short. Once I'm further into this thing, they will get longer. I'm still practicing how to write GRRM's amazing characters and trying to plunk Alys into this world. Patience is a virtue!

Alys I

Alys Snow loved to ride. For her fifteenth nameday, the widowed Lady Dustin who was her caregiver had offered her the choice of any of the Ryswell horses, and she had chosen a hot deep chestnut destrier. It was far too valuable a horse for an orphaned bastard, but Lady Dustin treated her like family in her own icy way, and even the Ryswells treated her as if she were far more than the mere nobody Alys knew she was. Unlike most bastards and orphans, she had been taught to read, penmanship, the intricacies of embroidery, learned the histories of the Seven Kingdoms and its greater and lesser houses, and the artifice of civility. Any who saw her or spoke with her would have believed her a true lady. Alys knew different. Further, Alys knew she was different. She named the horse Blood.

Alys was still trying to break the green stallion to ride without breaking his spirit, which was proving a delicate battle. Occasional odd, dark thoughts would enter her thoughts. "Might the horse respond more quickly if she bloodied him with her spurs, and that after she had skinned a bit of flesh off his flanks?" She was glad when these thoughts left her mind, as they disturbed her, and she knew she could not go to Barbrey Dustin with her concerns. She was not the mothering sort; she made it clear Alys had not been her bastard child, and that she had been well compensated for taking her in as an infant.

Once the horse had bored himself circling like an ouroboros, bucking, and rearing, Alys gave Blood his head, and they began to chase the shadows of birds across the hills of the Barrowlands. Her long, straight hair streamed like an oilslick black banner behind her as she lost herself in the steady rhythm of the horse beneath her. These were the moments Alys cherished most of all - she was most comfortable escaping into a world punctuated by silence apart from the jangle of stirrups and bit, and the creaking leather of her saddle. She was glad she had no name or lands because that afforded her freedom from being wed to a man who might not allow her such freedom. Riding cleansed her mind of those darker ideas that occasionally plagued her.

As girl and horse topped one of the hills, she could see riders coming from the east, and her heart lept into her throat. She could not see banners, much less faces, but she saw strangers, and turned Blood back toward the only home she had ever known, pushing him into a hard gallop. When she reached the holdfast, Alys left the foaming horse in the hands of a groom and rushed to greet Barbrey Dustin to warn her of the riders without even changing out of riding clothes.

Following a hurried curtsy, the words came pouring out of the girl in her whispery purr, "My lady, riders from the east, at least fifty men, too far off to see their banners but they appeared to be shades of red, are we expecting anyone, if not to whom else shall I go with this warning?"

Barbrey Dustin's lips curled in amusement at the normally calm girl's obvious discomfiture. Her sharp voice was tempered with false honey when she told Alys the truth. "I had a raven just this morning. You had best get that stench washed off you and make yourself presentable. Wear your nicest dress, the red wool would suit best." Lady Dustin paused, and when she continued her voice was cold. "Now that my dear sister has passed, your father is coming to take you home, Alys."

Before the import of those words could register, Lady Dustin dismissed Alys, who stood rooted on the spot, her eyes wide and uncomprehending. Had Lady Dustin truly said her father was coming for her? Did this mean she was not an orphan? Why would a man come for his bastard child after 15 years, anyway? Barbrey intruded on Alys' reverie, snapping, "Go ready yourself, girl. As soon as you barged so rudely into my chambers stinking of sweat, I sent a maid to fill your tub with hot water and scented oil."


	3. Barbrey I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barbrey reminisces on dead sisters & dead lovers

Barbrey I 

Barbrey Dustin clutched the note from her goodbrother in a trembling hand. She knew her sister Bethany's mind had been failing slowly since the birth of her daughter, but she had not expected to hear she was dead though not yet forty. She blamed Roose Bolton for everything that had fractured her sister. The miscarriages were somehow his doing, as were the still-births, and the babes who died within weeks of being born. Even Domeric, precious Domeric who had squired four years with the Ryswells, his death was Bolton's fault. The worst was when Roose brought his uncouth bastard to live with them. To shove the fruit of his infidelity into sweet Bethany's face and into her home was unforgivable to Barbrey.

Long before he brought the bastard home, he had stripped Barbrey's sister of her laughter, transforming her into something as quietly efficient as himself. And to think, there had been a time Barbrey was jealous of their union, jealous of her sister wedding into so ancient a house as Bolton. This jealousy was amplified when the only man she truly loved, Brandon Stark, heir to Winterfell and Warden to be of the North, was betrothed to Catelyn Tully. The disappointment was bitter as ashes in her mouth even after nearly twenty years had passed. Her father and she had then set their aims on Lord Rickard Stark's second son, Eddard, but with the deaths of both Brandon and his father for the amusement of King Aerys II, the auburn-haired trout was also given to Eddard. Barbrey was left to wed the jovial Willam Dustin, only to lose him after six months of marriage, a fatality in far Dorne to Robert's Rebellion.

And Lord Eddard Stark had brought back the beautiful red destrier she had gifted Willam without the man who proudly told his wife he would return from war to her astride that very mount. Stark had seemed sincere in his condolences, but while he brought his sister Lyanna's body to rest in the crypts beneath Winterfell, he left Willam's bones beneath some nameless mountain in the heat of Dorne. Barbrey had never forgiven, and in her loneliness & mourning she had developed an abiding hatred for the Starks.

By the time the lord of the Dreadfort came to her with his precious bundle, Barbrey was a font of bitterness, and being tasked with raising her sister's rejected daughter did little to dispel her negativity. Still, she was well compensated for caring for the infant, and came to grow somewhat fond of the child, despite her similarities to her father. While the child was solemn and never raised her voice, she was studious, wrote songs and poetry, and took to riding as much as her elder brother who was a squire at Barrowton. It was none too difficult to keep brother and sister apart, and Barbrey silently applauded herself for the cunning ways she had managed it. The fact that Domeric was so busy with his fellow squires made it easy for him to overlook the little orphaned bastard.

Now, Barbrey's haughty and mentally unsound sister was no more, and her goodbrother was crossing the North to reclaim the child his late wife had refused. Barbrey did not mind giving up Alys, as she bore no actual love for the girl, but she would have preferred to send the girl to her father under escort rather than seeing Roose Bolton again. Her hatred for him was almost as virulent as her hatred for Starks, for he had taken the light from her sister's eyes and the laughter from her voice.

Barbrey Dustin was of the North. The North remembers, and it does not forgive.


	4. Alys II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alys meets her father

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise, after all this introductory fluff, the action is coming. I just want to get the characters and setting well established before anything real happens.

Alys wished that she had time to soak in the hot, fragrant water of her bath, relax muscles aching from her hard ride on the green stallion, and think. Mostly, she wanted to think. Lady Dustin never told her that she had a father. She still had not told Alys whom to expect riding to Barrowtown to pick her up. As she washed her hair, she hoped it would have time to dry before meeting her father, though she doubted it, as it was both long and thick, and typically took a few hours to dry. She scrubbed herself until her pale skin glowed pink and stung in the hot water, trying to rid her body of any imaginable offensive smell. She then took a dagger to scrape the dirt from beneath her nails, wondering how it would feel to slide the dagger under someone else's nail and pop it off. Unbidden, the hand not holding the knife slid between her thighs, but as soon as a fingertip brushed over the small bundle of nerves above her entrance, she shuddered and stopped. This was not the time to indulge in her fantasies, especially not with a handmaiden hovering by the fireplace. Huffing softly, she put down the knife. Such thoughts were unsuitable for a girl of any social caste, and she was certain that her father would be horrified to know his daughter harboured such thoughts, and worse.

She hurriedly got out of the tub, banishing all thoughts but those of getting ready to meet the father who had not wanted her for fifteen years. Lady Dustin's own handmaiden was attending to her, drying Alys' lithe body with linen, touching her pulse points with perfume that matched the bath oils, and wringing as much water as possible from her smooth, blue-black hair. Alys, used to tending to her own needs, was a bit frustrated by the girl's ministrations and constant chatter, but did not let it show on her face. Yes, she was pleased that she would finally meet her father. No, she did not know who he was. Yes, she was perfectly content to wear the red woolen dress Lady Dustin had suggested. Even though the inane conversation grated on her nerves, Alys never raised her voice.

As the little handmaiden was lacing her into the dress, Alys was thankful that her daily rides through the barrowlands and other athletic and unladylike pursuits had gifted her with a small, tight waist requiring no corset even in this close-fitting dress with its flowing skirts. She could not abide by the thought of her breathing or movements being restricted, though she did not mind wearing dresses. Even at fifteen, she still sometimes dreamt that this life was a mistake, and that she was truly a princess who had been stolen from her real family, not an orphan and a bastard. In her dreams, when her real parents finally found her, they allowed her to kill her kidnapper slowly. She imagined cutting strips of flesh from the man's body, one strip for each year she had lived without her parents.

And now, her real father was coming for her! Alys had to consciously reign in her enthusiasm. It was exciting and novel, but she still burned with the pain of knowing he had cast her aside, and she could think of no good reason to give away a baby girl and never visit her. Even though she was a bastard, and if his wife refused to see her, if he could come now, he could have come before. Bitterness rose like bile in her throat, and she resolved to be cold to the man, to never show him the affection he had denied her. And so died her enthusiasm. The familiar still and cold came over her, and she took comfort in it.

The handmaiden continued to try to do something with Alys' heavy, still-wet hair, finally deciding on some braids, into which she deftly wove some pale pink flowers. While Alys' face remained impassive, the older girl flitted about in excitement. "Isn't m'lady a pretty little sight! If only you had some jewelry, rubies and moonstones would so flatter your colouring!" Alys was not interested in how she looked, though after a glance in the mirror she could not deny that the whole ensemble was flattering. Neither could she deny that the effect would be enhanced with some jewels, but a girl in her position was fortunate enough to have a roof over her head. She wondered just who she was supposed to be impressing. She assumed it was one of Lady Dustin's uncles or cousins, probably either a Ryswell or a Dustin, and decently highborn if Lady Dustin insisted on her wearing her finest dress.

Finally, the handmaiden seemed to be pleased with Alys' appearance, and the two went to Lady Dustin's solar for inspection. Barbrey nodded her approval, and took Alys by the elbow, leading her down the stairs and out to the yard. "I shall leave it to your father to explain your situation. I would say it has been a pleasure to raise you, but we both know that would be a baseless formality with little truth in it. You will likely find your position vastly changed, but do not expect warmth or affection in your new life. Good luck, Alys," Lady Dustin said with an enigmatic smile.

Alys merely stood, waiting, listening for the familiar sounds of the approaching men. To her shame, she found her palms were sweating, and she surreptitiously wiped them on her skirts. Looking through the double gateway, she could see the men before she could hear them, and now she recognized the pink and red flayed man of House Bolton. Alys knew that Lady Dustin's sister was wed to the lord of the Dreadfort. This must be what Lady Dustin meant when she said her sister had passed. Alys presumed that her father was riding along with the Dreadfort men coming to give their condolences to their late lady's widowed sister, though so large a contingent of men seemed odd.

As the company approached, Alys wondered at how unmatched the two head riders appeared. The elder sat trim and tall in his saddle, riding with easy grace, and simply clad in black with a pink cloak. Alys immediately recognized him as Roose Bolton himself, as he had visited several times during Alys' wardship at Barrowton. The young man riding next to the lord was thick with muscle, rawboned, and she could see he had thick lips and a heavy brow even from a distance. But his outfit was truly ludicrous, especially when seen next to the simplicity of Lord Bolton's staid attire. It was a hodgepodge of pink silks and red velvets, and what appeared to be a teardrop ruby hung from his ear. Were she not familiar with Lord Bolton's lack of humor, she might have thought him the fool of the Dreadfort. The corners of her slightly thin lips twitched both at the sight and the thought of humorless Roose Bolton keeping a fool.

Lord Bolton and the unfamiliar young man in his ostentatious outfit rode up to meet Lady Dustin and Alys. Alys looked through them, trying to surmise which of the men waiting just outside the gate might be her father, as the two men dismounted and approached. The stable boy grabbed the two destriers' reins and held them, as both Alys and Barbrey sank into curtsies, Alys' far deeper and more graceful thanks to youth. As she was focused on the men outside, she failed to note the predatory look the young man at Lord Bolton's side was giving her. Alys could barely hear the lord as he bade the ladies stand, his voice even more whispery soft than her own yet somehow commanding. As she rose, her eyes downcast, Alys heard her guardian introduce her. "Roose, it is with pleasure that I present your daughter, Alys."

At that, Alys looked up into strange, blue grey eyes that were almost colourless, resembling nothing more than chips of dirty ice, eyes identical to her own.


	5. Ramsay I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ramsay and Alys find some common ground, which Ramsay finds delightful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, /things/ are starting to happen. But who could win? The older boy, already adept at killing, or the slight girl haunted by bloody thoughts?

Ramsay I

Ramsay Snow had difficulty controlling his temper for the whole week-long ride from the Dreadfort to Barrowton, and it was his horse that suffered most for it. By the time Barrowton was in sight, the beast's flanks were bloody from his spurs, his ears pinned back, and his eyes rolled wildly any time Ramsay jerked on the curb bit in his mouth, which was far more frequent than necessary. Now with both Domeric and Bethany out of the way, he assumed that he would be his father's heir despite being a bastard. Gods, he hated that word, and it had dogged him all his life. Even though Domeric had sought him out and convinced his father to let Ramsay come live with them at the Dreadfort, Ramsay could not help feel that it was some sort of jape at his expense, much like when his lord father had sent him Heke as a manservant while he still lived with his mother. With Heke, the joke was really on Lord Roose, as in Heke Ramsay found something of a kindred spirit, and the boy greatly enjoyed the lessons he learned from the man, despite the unrelenting odor of purulent decay and fish that permeated the man's body, no matter how many times a day he bathed. Once, the man even drank a bottle of Lady Bethany's perfume, which nearly killed Heke, and did nothing to endear her husband's bastard to her. The nickname Reek was wholly appropriate.

Ramsay resented that his father would not allow him to bring his Reek along on this trip. Even more than that, he resented the purpose of the trip. He did not want a little sister, especially not a trueborn sister who would be a true Bolton and ahead of him in the line of succession. Had he not done everything his father ever asked of him? He wished the girl had indeed been stillborn as Lady Bethany insisted she was. He found himself smiling toothily as he thought of the various ways a fifteen-year-old girl could accidentally die, and he wondered idly whether the girl was a maiden. He and Reek could have so much fun welcoming his sister to the family, even after the light had left her eyes and her body began to cool. That was when Reek liked them best. Ramsay preferred the buildup, when they were screaming, begging, and hopefully fighting. Ramsay's father said that Reek's stench was the exterior manifestation of the man's rotten core. Ramsay liked to think that he might be the only man alive who knew more about what truly lay inside people than his father.

As he rode beside his father, in what he considered his rightful place, through the gates at Barrowton, he looked over the two women standing in front of the servants. He spared barely a glance for the haughty-looking older woman who did not even deign to look at him, but rather kept her eyes on his father. He could not stop staring at the girl next to Lady Barbrey. While she was not quite a beauty, having inherited her father's thin lips and her mother's mask-like, expressionless face, he admired what of her body he could see under the thick wool of her well-fitted dress, and tried to think of how she would sound when she screamed, perhaps when he yanked back on that lustrous black hair to expose the marble-pale column of her throat to his teeth or his blade. Something about the set of her shoulders made Ramsay think she would be a fighter, that his new little sister would be so much more fun than her older brother, Domeric. 

Once he and his father dismounted and the stable boy took their horses, the two women curtsied, and when his father bade them rise Lady Barbrey introduced the girl as Alys Bolton. Alys looked genuinely shocked, and Ramsay was quite amused to see the blush rise in her cheeks, though he was almost unnerved to see the eerie eyes he shared with his father appraising him coolly from a delicately feminine face. She stood still even as his father placed a hand on her shoulder, and said in his whispery voice, "We have much to discuss, my Alys, and I assume you must have many questions for me." She merely nodded her head, not displaying fear or any other emotion, then looked pointedly at Ramsay. Roose bared his teeth in what might have been a smile, and told her, "Dear child, this is my bastard son, your half-brother Ramsay Snow."

At that, even though he was bristling inside at having been revealed immediately as a bastard, Ramsay grabbed Alys' small white hand that seemed so delicate he could easily break it with a squeeze, and brought it to his mouth for a kiss. He made certain she could feel his hot breath on her hand, and scraped it with his teeth. A slight tremor was the sole reaction he received in return, but that was enough for Ramsay, at least for now. Ramsay held her hand a few moments longer than was comfortable, a wolfish grin twisting his thick lips and exposing sharp teeth. "It is a pleasure to meet you, little sister. I certainly look forward to getting to know you better."

The corners of Alys' mouth twitched into a semblance of a smile that reminded Ramsay exactly of his father's expression, even though this was obviously the first time the two had met. Her voice came out like a quiet purr or claws on silk. "I am indeed pleased to learn I have a family."

Even though her answer was perfectly polite, Ramsay resented it for being enigmatic and impersonal. He was furious that she was so similar to their father even though they did not know each other, more similar than he ever was, even though he practiced imitating his father's whispery voice, air of authority, and command over his emotions, and had since his parentage was first disclosed to him. He thought he hated his sister when his father first mentioned her existence, but now that he had met her, he realized what true hatred was. He had been jealous of Domeric, but was unable to hate the older boy who had sought him out and pleaded with his parents to allow Ramsay to come live with them. Because he did not hate his half-brother, Domeric died gently by Ramsay's standards, only three days of cramping, bloody diarrhea, and vomiting. Ramsay already knew he would give Alys no such mercy.

Lady Dustin interrupted Ramsay's assessment of his half-sister, just as his gaze was sliding down from how her budding breasts pressed against the tight bodice of the crimson dress to a waist he suspected his large hands might reach all the way around, requesting that they come inside and make themselves comfortable before the feast, that her steward would see to the lodging and comfort of their men.

As they followed Lady Dustin inside, Ramsay wrapped a heavy, muscular arm over Alys' narrow shoulder in what appeared to be an affectionate gesture, but the full weight of his arm was in it. "Little sister, do you enjoy riding horses?" He asked, his breath hot in her ear.

She turned her face to him, and while her slight smile never broadened, her pale eyes appeared to become lit from within. "Riding is my passion, um. Ramsay."

At that, Ramsay tightened his grip on her shoulder to the point where she should have winced, and was pleased to see her slight smile falter. Grinning broadly, he rejoined, whispering in her ear, "Riding is one of my passions, too," his low voice somehow equally sweet and threatening, heavy with implication.

Making sure that nobody was looking, he quickly dropped his hand to her chest and tweaked her nipple through her woolen dress hard enough to make Alys yelp, then wrapped his arm around her in what would have appeared to anyone watching to be a brotherly hug. When his father looked at them sharply in response to Alys' cry, Ramsay was already asking, "Did you step on a sharp rock, sweet sister?" The girl must have felt trapped between her father's ice-like look and her brother's vulpine smile, and she softly replied, "Yes, it was a right sharp rock. I am afraid my boots need new soles."

The party began to follow Lady Barbrey into the great hall, but Ramsay, still gripping Alys' shoulder tightly, held her back. His smile only grew broader, revealing more sharp, crooked teeth. "Since you enjoy riding so much, I would be honoured if you would join me and my boys on a hunting trip, as a chance to bond as siblings should. I only had so short a time with our brother Domeric, and I fully intend to make the most of my time with you."


	6. Roose II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What it actually means to be a Bolton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of feel like switching from POV chapters to an omniscient narrator. Not sure yet. I may tell most of it either through Alys' eyes or maybe Ramsay's. Hell, I may choose one of the Boys as the main POV. I know the plot and where it ends, just not who should be telling the damned little tale of my AU.

Roose II 

Despite the recent losses of first his much-admired heir and his wife, the lord of the Dreadfort found himself pleased. Sending the daughter whose life Bethany had denied to be raised by Bethany's coolly practical sister Barbrey was an idea that had borne truly sweet fruit. In his eyes, Alys was a charming young lady, her words careful, her movements and expressions subtle. He noted with relief that she was far more reserved than Domeric had been. The Dreadfort had its secrets, and any who were to live there must know discretion.

While the bastard had his uses and skills, he lacked discretion. At the age of 18, he had already developed a reputation for dark deeds, and the smallfolk on Bolton land were afraid to speak his name. Roose found this disappointing, and he never missed an opportunity to attempt to turn Ramsay's failures into lessons. Ramsay reveled in the fear of others, much to Roose's dismay. His activities differed little from those of his bastard, but he had practiced caution, while Ramsay seemed to be practicing terror. This flew in the face of the most important lesson Roose persistently tried to teach his son, the lesson that had allowed him to continue the outlawed tradition of the First Night, the lesson that allowed him to go for hunts, the lesson that allowed him to continue the Bolton family tradition of flaying their prisoners, another outlawed practice: "Be discreet. A peaceful land, a quiet people."

Roose maintained his patience and calm through leeching out any bad blood, and it worked well for him. He could not recall the last time he had to raise his voice. He was very pleased to see that Alys sat before him, her hands steady in her lap, not showing fear of the father she only knew by sight and reputation. He asked her questions in his spider soft voice, and she responded in a quiet purr he knew was no affectation or imitation, unlike his bastard's attempts to imitate him, his attempts at subtlety.

She met his eyes and did not tremble, even though there were battle-hardened lords who could not bear his gaze. "Alys," he asked softly. "Do you know what it means to be a Bolton?"

Her expression gave away nothing, though the pause before she answered spoke volumes. Roose found himself leaning in to hear her soft response. "My lord, your House words are "Our Blades are Sharp, your sigil is a red flayed man on a field of pink, and your seat is the Dreadfort. House Bolton is as old as any in Westeros, tracing its roots to the First Men. For generations, Boltons and Starks were bitter enemies, and Boltons took pride in wearing the flayed skins of dead Starks, though now you are a Stark bannerman. Lady Dustin said that you have said, of an occasion, that while a naked man has few secrets, a flayed man has none."

Roose found himself amused by the girl's disconnected, factual description of their family history. Everything was accurate, but impersonal. He picked up Alys' hands in his, absently noting that her fingers were long and elegant like Bethany's had been rather than short and strong like his own, though they were callused, likely from riding based on what Barbrey had told him. 

"Alys, you are a Bolton. My wife was your mother. I am your father. You just spoke our House words and told the history of our family." Despite never raising his voice, he emphasized the word "our." He watched a faint blush suffuse his daughter's pale cheeks.

Roose was pleased when his daughter squeezed his hands. "I do not know what it means to be a Bolton, my lord, though I suspect that it means waiting in shadows while pretending to be in the light, waiting for the opportunity to take what should belong to us no less than it does to the Starks, and to bring back the Old Ways."

His thin lips pulled back in a semblance of a smile, and he drew Alys into an embrace. He was the lord of the Dreadfort, and as such he would not apologize to this girl for having given her over to a bitter aunt to raise, but hearing her quietly earnest and mature replies to very adult questions filled him with pride. He might not have raised this girl, but she was his blood. She was a Bolton. Even though his bastard had been raised in the shadow of the Dreadfort, even though Domeric had taken the younger boy under his wing, and even though Ramsay had spent two years living as family within the Dreadfort, he had not yet picked up what the girl seemed to perceive naturally. "This is further proof that blood will tell," Roose told himself.

Roose did not often experience regret, but it upset him that his daughter was almost a woman grown, and that he would be bringing Alys home just in time to start working on the politics of a marriage. He wondered how well he could get to know her before he had to give her away, and that thought made him angry at Bethany, and angry at himself. While hugging his daughter for the first time, the lord of the Dreadfort was damning himself for having spilled his seed in Ramsay's lowborn mother, damning himself for not having scraped the growing babe out of her with his greatsword, and in all ways damning himself for not having ended his bastard son before his wife learned of the boy's existence.

Just then, he looked up, and his eyes met those of the bastard whose existence he had just been wishing had ended before it even began, and the knowing mockery he saw in those eyes so like his own enraged him. 

No matter how apt Alys might prove in understanding and living up to her newfound heritage, Roose could not imagine the fair, slender girl with her solemn expressions to be capable of all that holding the Dreadfort required. Her mother had only followed him once into the dungeons beneath, and he had been forced to carry her unconscious body up to their room before he had finished lifting the first strip of skin from the flesh beneath. Domeric had been competent, viewing it as a duty not a pleasure, much as his father did, and Ramsay had already proved himself adept at the art of flaying. 

Roose still found it distasteful to remember just how many squirrels, rabbits, cats, and people had been messily butchered before Ramsay's heavy hands finally learned the delicate art of flaying, not because of the loss of so many dozens of lives, but because in his zeal, Ramsay's earliest attempts had been so untidy as to assault Roose's sensibilities. The young man seemed to lose all sense of decorum when flaying a prisoner, and on more than one occasion the lord of the Dreadfort had found his bastard naked and shamelessly rutting against or into the wounds he was inflicting. Just recalling such sights caused his blood to become heated, and he suspected he would need to see the maester for a leeching before bed. His bastard son's bad blood inflamed his own, especially when he thought of the boy's eyes glazed with lust as he slashed at a body, mindless of where or why he was cutting. This was utterly unlike the emotionless precision Roose himself exhibited when preparing a prisoner.

Roose did not expect he would have the opportunity to share that aspect of Bolton heritage with his daughter, which increasingly disappointed him as the evening passed in quiet conversation and he truly began to get to know his daughter.


	7. Alys III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Ryswells show up just in time and Lady Dustin hosts a feast

By the time a servant came to summon them to supper, Alys was surprised at the din that greeted her ears. Her arm looped in her father's, they walked up to the dais, her father taking the place of honor at the head table, with Lady Barbrey on his right and Alys herself on his left, and next to her, her bastard half-brother Ramsay. Roger Riswell, Lady Barbrey's brother, sat on his sister's other side, flanked by his other two brothers. Alys had never before supped at the head table, generally taking her meals either below the salt or, as was her preference, in the kitchen alone, but she was not about to admit this fact to anyone present.

Looking around, Alys was surprised to see how many of the Ryswells had arrived while she and her father had been getting acquainted, and she was amused as always by the different-coloured horses on their banners. Years ago, Lady Barbrey had told Alys that her various uncles and cousins could agree on nothing, not even their colours. The fact so many were here implied to her that far more time had gone into planning this meeting than she initially realized. Just as Alys was starting to wonder just how many people here had known her true identity all along, her father looked to her and murmured, "Lady Dustin and her father were most discreet. Your heritage cannot have been an easy secret to keep given your striking resemblance to your lady mother, and the ghost grey of your eyes." 

Alys thought her father sounded grudgingly impressed by their ability to have kept her identity a secret for fifteen years. She was too ashamed to tell him that she had avoided large gatherings at Barrowton, preferring to keep to herself to avoid answering questions about who she was. In fact, the last time Lord Bolton and his retinue had come to Barrowton, she had taken every meal in the kitchen. She looked to her side at Ramsay, who appeared perfectly comfortable sitting at the high table among people with names despite being not only a bastard but one with a commoner for a mother, and he was already deep into his second cup of wine. He must have noticed her glance, because he leaned into her, leering. Her skin crawled as she could feel the heat radiating off his body, and her stomach felt hollow despite being filled with sumptuous food when she heard his words. 

"Would her ladyship grace her bastard brother with a dance when the time comes?" 

Ramsay's voice was overly loud and carried, causing her to blush, especially at how he put a grinding emphasis on the word "bastard," and a bit of spittle accumulated at the corners of his mouth. The high-pitched and oddly incongruous giggle that followed did nothing to ease her discomfiture, but she tried to hide her reaction behind the mask of civility. She did not want her newfound father to see just how uncomfortable she was around his bastard, especially not after the painful way he had tweaked her breast only hours earlier, managing to keep that small cruelty hidden despite the presence of Lady Dustin, his father, and several servants. Something inside her called for vengeance, even as she wore her sweetest expression.

"It would be a pleasure, Ramsay," she replied coolly, a raven brow arched, definitely challenging him. She suspected that the bastard would be the only one to take any pleasure in the dance, but she hoped to be able to make him feel uncomfortable, possibly make him look even more a fool than his garb already did. Alys had long ago learned to take her pleasures in small things, given her station in life.

And, in the dance, the opportunity did present itself. The bard began to sing a song with which Alys was unfamiliar, but the rhythm was similar enough to some other dances she knew that she had no trouble. Ramsay, however, was an awkward dancer, and he dragged her into the middle of the throng where those sitting up on the dais would not see so clearly. At least that was Alys' initial supposition. Not only was he an awkward dancer, but he seemed to grow increasingly angry at Alys' grace. The first time he stepped on her foot, he growled, "Stupid bitch, the man is supposed to lead, and you should follow me."

Alys chuckled at that, replying, "It would be easier done if I were dancing with a man."

While her tone was light and merely teasing, Ramsay's response frightened her. He grabbed her and pressed her so tightly against him that she could feel his cock was hard and pressing into her stomach, and his breath smelled like sour wine when he leaned in to whisper with his wet, wormy lips against her ear, his skin rough where it rubbed her cheek. "The Dreadfort will be mine, and you will be meeting your trueborn brother soon enough, but before that we will have a great deal of fun, you and I."

She was unable to repress a shudder of disgust when he ground his hips against her, and she tried to shove him away. As she pushed against him, he let go of her, and Alys found herself off balance and unable to recover before falling to the floor. She blushed, and it took all of her will not to burst into tears. The day had already been emotionally overwhelming, and her half-brother's easy cruelty was almost too much for her. Still, when he offered her his hand to help her to her feet, she took it with a faint smile that did not falter when he jerked her painfully back against him, and she said nothing in response when he chided her for her clumsiness.

Alys was numb with horror, but finished the dance with Ramsay, and then she danced with Lady Barbrey's brothers Roger and Rickard Riswell, men she had only just discovered were her uncles, and then with Harwood Stout before she felt it appropriate to plead exhaustion and return to her place beside her father. Part of her hoped that Lord Bolton would ask her to dance, but she truly was exhausted from the long and eventful day, and it was with gratitude that she took her father's arm when he excused them from the festivities and escorted her to her room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think the rest of the chapters will likely be essentially Alys' POV and thus have names instead of numbers, with occasional insights into others, which will be named as POV chapters. I'm looking forward to leaving Barrowton and getting to the Dreadfort already.


	8. Alys IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little look at Alys' thoughts - a short one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm writing slowly right now due to a heavy caseload this month.
> 
> Tomorrow (in the story), there will be a meeting of stallions named Blood. Ok, some hilarity might ensue then, depending on what you find funny.

Alys IV

Alys' head was spinning. The lady of Barrowton was her aunt. Her mother was dead, but only recently, and she had a father and a bastard half-brother. She had a name and a House, both ancient. Her lineage could be traced to the First Men.

She sat on the edge of the bed, brushing her hair, thinking about the bastard's unprovoked malevolence toward her. Alys was used to having no family and no real position, and therefore being ignored by everyone from servants to knights or lords or smallfolk. She was very unsettled to find herself an object of envy. She knew instinctively that Roose Bolton would not be sympathetic. To her, he was enigmatic. He had not been warm to her, but he had appeared very interested in her life, asking probing questions that had required her to think about who she was, her very character, what she desired from life. She was certain her explanations of herself sounded very provincial to him, but she was relieved that at least she had not caught him giving her the looks of disappointment she noticed him giving Ramsay Snow whenever he raised his voice. Occasionally, Ramsay slurred his vowels, and she would have known Lord Bolton ("no, my father," a small voice inside her reminded her, emphasizing the word "father.") had not raised him even if he had not told her a bit about Ramsay's position within his household, as his speech was so far removed from the carefully measured tones the elder employed.

Thinking back on her earlier conversation with her father, she realized that while he had provided her with many facts about her history, his history, and what he expected of her, but he had not told her what he felt about anything.

"How could anyone be so self-contained?" She wondered, "How could such a calm man be the object of the black rumors that trailed after him like sharp-edged shadows? And - does he even have feelings?"

Alys did not want to admit to herself that those black rumors had always fascinated her - that the ice-eyed, quiet lord of the Dreadfort had hunted two-legged prey in the dark eastern woods, exercised the forbidden right of the First Night, still performed the outlawed practice of flaying his enemies. There were similar stories circulating about Ramsay, but they were cruder, somehow, base & degenerate rather than intriguing.

The thought of what her bastard brother was reported to do to young women snapped Alys out of her reverie, and she set down her comb, which had been in her hand hovering unused over her hair for several minutes. She heard a distressingly familiar, oddly high-pitched male giggle from the doorway and looked up into a pair of ghost-grey eyes that shone like twin moons in the writhing flickering of a tallow candle. 

"I came to wish my new sister sweet dreams," Ramsay said, doing an impression of Alys' own mocking tone from earlier in the night.

Or was that his mocking tone, just another similarity born of shared blood?


	9. Alys V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A morning ride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been so long without posting - the LCD interface of my iPad died, so no writing for me.

Alys V

Alys slept only fitfully, her dreams a miasmic whorl of blood and sharp blades, and her time awake full of fear of what Ramsay would do to her if she unbolted the door. She finally gave up on sleep around the time dawn's grey tendrils began to crawl over her windowsill and slink across the rushes covering the floor of her chamber. She dressed slowly, feeling as though she were wading through chest-deep waters with occasional waves crashing over her head. This was no way to start the day when they were to leave Barrow Hall for the Dreadfort. This was certainly no way to start a day that would be spent in the company of her newly-discovered family and their entourage. (Were they also her entourage? Alys suspected they were, or at least that they would be if they recognized her from the feast the night before).

She made her way downstairs nearly blindly as if swimming through an ocean of fog. The leather of her riding breeches creaked softly as she walked, the sound a pleasant counterpoint to the dry crunch of the rushes beneath her boots. As she crossed the threshold, the unfiltered grey morning light left her stumbling blindly toward the stables. She felt winesick though she hardly drank the night before. She did not feel like fighting her stallion just to bridle him, so she climbed up into the hayloft to rouse a stable boy.

"Please go and saddle Blood for me," she asked as soon as a boy's sleep-slack face appeared.

Alys was pleased that her voice did not betray the fog that still slowed her mind and her movements. She was thinking that a brisk ride in the rills would clear her mind when the stable boy, a lad she did not recognize by sight startled her by asking a question.

"Which Blood, m'lady?"

She looked at the boy as if he had sprung tentacles.

"Blood. The 17 hand deep-chestnut destrier." She hesitated as the boy gaped at her. "The one that broke the groom's skull last month?"

The boy bobbed his head frantically. "Oh, aye m'lady!" the boy said before scrambling down the ladder and into the depths of the stable.

Alys did not think much of the boy's reaction to her request for her stallion, dismissing it as the confusion of a new hire. The stallion fighting the bit with every step distracted her from the stable boy, discovering her family, setting out for the Dreadfort when the sun had risen high enough to burn the dew off the grass, the nightmares of the earlier night, and the permeating mental fog that had characterized the morning. Her mind and body were wholly focused on the lunging stallion beneath her.

By the time Blood quieted and accepted the bit, the sun had fully risen and the dew had evaporated into mist in the chill air, so it was time for Alys to guide the green stallion back to the stables. She was relieved she owned so little; she doubted it would take more than a few minutes to pack her clothes. Thinking about the bedroom she had slept in as long as she could remember, she realized that she truly owned nothing but her clothes and her brush, and she was not entirely certain the brush was not actually Lady Barbrey's.

Alys' anxiety replaced the fog that had permeated her morning, steadily increasing as she closed in on Barrow Hall, and the stallion seemed to pick up her mood, shying at the shadows of buzzards and crows circling overhead, not very far removed from Barrowton.

"Something is dead out in the Barrowlands," Alys thought, "Something that was not when I rode this very route yesterday."

She wondered what it was, how it had died, and how long it would take the carrion beasts to pick the body clean. Knowing the Barrowlands as well as she did, she expected the bones to be cleaned of all traces of flesh and scattered before the next dawn.

Everything was different yesterday. There was nothing dead in the sparse woods large enough to attract the airborne scavengers. If Alys were to be completely honest with herself, she would admit that she was perfectly content to live as a nameless orphan leading a comfortable, simple existence within the cheerless but familiar confines of Barrowton. She admitted to herself that she was not ambitious. She recognized that she was of a marriageable age, had flowered a full two years earlier, but she had not reciprocated the interest of household guards or stable boys, and she had not joined the serving girls or handmaidens as they fantasized about various knights from history and their possible modern counterparts.

How much would things change when she arrived at the Dreadfort? Would she have to become a wholly different young woman. She had the grace and manners to be a lady, she knew that Lady Barbrey had made certain of that though at the time she had not understood why, which made her feel superior to Ramsay Snow, whose speech and lack of decorum made it painfully obvious he was baseborn and not castle-raised.

She was thinking about how uncouth the bastard was as she rode into the yard of Barrow Hall just in time to hear his strident voice coming from the stables. For a moment, Alys worried that she was late in returning, that she would not have time to pack her meager belongings, or gods forbid that she was holding up Lord Bolton and his entourage.

Alys wondered whether she would ever think of him as her father first and lord of the Dreadfort second.

She dismounted and led the high strung stallion to the hitching post just outside the stable. She could hear voices from inside, one the youthful voice of the possibly-new stable boy who had not known her horse, and the other the grating voice she had come to associate with Ramsay Snow. She slipped the halter over Blood's bridle and went to hurry into Barrow Hall, hoping to avoid seeing the bastard any more than absolutely necessary, and now, when she had to pack to go to a home she had never seen, was not a time it was necessary to see him.

However, luck was not with Alys, and she had taken a scant three steps toward the doorway before she heard the meat sound of flesh striking flesh followed by a sharp yelp, and then the stamping of boots on scattered hay and packed dirt. 

Before Alys had time to decide whether she ought to check on the stable boy or hurry inside to avoid Ramsay, she felt a heavy hand with short, thick fingers pressing down on her shoulder and breath redolent of stale wine in her ear.

"What is a little lady like you doing with such a nice piece of horseflesh?"

Alys straightened her shoulders and turned around to look at Ramsay. She resented that she had to look up at him, wishing she could look down her nose at him, thus expressing her disdain without having to waste words on the young man she had already deemed unworthy. Even when she was an orphaned bastard, Alys felt that she would have thought Ramsay unworthy of her attention. 

Looking up into his eyes so like her own, she smirked.

"Blood comes from some of the best Ryswell stock -"

Ramsay interrupted Alys with his odd giggle, his head thrown back and sharp white teeth flashing.

"You named your horse Blood?"

Ramsay laughed again, the high-pitched sound causing Alys' skin to prickle, then the young man shocked her by sweeping her up in his arms and spinning her around, placing an unpleasantly wet kiss on her mouth before setting her down.

"I may just decide I like you after all, little sister. Would you believe I call my mount Blood, as well?"

With that, the bastard sauntered off, leaving Alys bewildered, disgusted, and more than a little curious as she furiously wiped his unwelcome kiss off her mouth with her sleeve until her lips stung.


	10. The Barrowlands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where a hunter was yesterday, scavengers are today - this is why Alys saw the crows and buzzards circling as she rode back to Barrow Hall. Ramsay, upset by the turn of events, had himself a bit of fun while her father was getting to know her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Ramsay's impromptu hunt is quite gory, and a taste of what's to come.
> 
> This brief little chapter is not for the weak-stomached.

The Barrowlands 

She had been a pretty girl, big-breasted, pink and plump with hair the colour of straw, silken atop her head and crinkly between her legs. Her lips, too, were pink and plump, naturally curling into a smile ripe to the point of bursting with laughter. 

Yesterday, just before the sun disappeared behind the tops of the sentinel pines, she was doing the washing for her mother and little brothers in the creek only a few yards behind the one-room A-frame cottage that housed all seven of them. She had been singing when the unfamiliar man on horseback rode up, and though her laughter was always sweet, her singing sounded like a parliament of rooks squabbling. 

She had laughed to see a man on a warhorse in a pink cloak.

She had not stopped laughing when he reached down and grabbed her arm to sweep her onto the horse before him. She had turned around, still smiling with crooked teeth as she looked into eyes so pale they might have been colourless.

Her mouth still hung open in a glistening smile, but no laughter threatened to erupt. One of her teeth was embedded in a smear of coppery brown in the bark tree against which she was leaning off-kilter, well above the lolling red ruin of her face. Still more teeth were spread about her, misshapen pearls in trampled grass. The hard dirt on which she sat, legs splayed and stripped in places to yellow fat or purple muscle, was stained, cracked and flaking. A gelatinous, blue-veined white mound tipped in pink winked obscenely up from between calves divested of their skin at the flies that covered her and formed a macabre, iridescent-black and buzzing restoration of defleshed modesty. 

Animals of the inhuman sort had their time with her body after the man, humming tunelessly and smiling, had departed. A fox had carried a firm orb that popped between her teeth back to her den, and would return the next day for whatever oily flesh braver scavengers than she would leave clinging to the girl's yellow bones. Strips of skin, carefully excised, were laid out with a certain artistic flavor among strands the color of straw that glinted merrily whenever the sun broke through the shadows of the circling carrion birds.

The girl's name was Serra, and she had died screaming less than a mile from her home a fortnight before her fourteenth nameday.


	11. Alys VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ramsay tells stories. Alys reacts, losing some degree of control. Roose may notice. The Dreadfort enters stage left. The players are assembling and the stage is set.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the (rancid) meat of the story begins! I'm starting to have a LOT of fun writing this. Probably too much. I'm considering re-adding Roose and Ramsay's POVs. I'd love to get some feedback - criticism, thoughts, reactions, ideas?

Alys VI

Lady Barbrey offered a wheelhouse for her niece's comfort on the ride to the Dreadfort, but Alys preferred to ride Blood. She could not tell whether or not her father approved of her dressed like a squire and riding astride with him and Ramsay Snow at the head of the Bolton host. Her aunt told her why there was faraway look on her father's normally impassive face while she rolled her dresses and smallclothes to pack in the leather bag Roose had given her for that purpose.

"The last time Roose Bolton brought a child of his home from here, that child was dead within a month. Your long-suffering mother never recovered from Domeric's death."

Lady Dustin had made it clear to Alys that she believed Domeric Bolton's death was unnatural, and that Ramsay was responsible for the death of the older brother Alys would never know. Alys was more upset that she had not gotten to know Domeric. They had lived under the same roof and eaten in the same hall, yet Alys did not believe they had ever exchanged a word. She had never been close enough to him to see if he, too, had the distinctive eyes she shared with her father and Ramsay. What harm would it have done for Lady Dustin to have introduced them? Bitterness roiled inside her, consuming any joy or excitement she felt to be going to her ancestral home with her family.

Alys' sense of family was as broken as the neck of a fallen nestling.

Thoughts of the four years in unknown proximity to the brother she would never actually know drove all but the most fleeting thoughts of the half-brother she already felt she knew better than she ever would have wanted from her mind. Alys tried to recall everything she could of Domeric Bolton, but all she had were fragments: a careless smile, dark hair, lean limbs. There was no voice to hear or words to recall. Alys felt empty when a servant came to carry her small bag of belongings.

She felt no less empty riding between her father and baseborn brother, when they stopped to eat, when the two stallions called Blood pinned their ears and snapped, or when she slept under guard alone in her tent. So passed the ride across the North. Her father rode in almost complete silence. Ramsay spoke loudly, regaling them with tales of his hunting prowess. Alys suspected the young man sought an approving word from his father, but none such was forthcoming. The first night, she dreamed of a hunt, but when her arrow found purchase in the flesh of a proud young buck with gaudy antlers, it turned and looked back at her with sad, dark blue-grey eyes in a face that was all-too young and all-too human. It opened its mouth to speak, but the skin sloughed off its face and its lips squirmed worm-like in a mask of blood. The night before they were to arrive at the Dreadfort, she dreamt she was fishing from a dock with Ramsay and caught nothing but blobs of tar while Ramsay pulled in a malformed, darkly oozing creature with broken tentacles. The next day when Ramsay began telling of slaying a wolf and her pups deep in some dark wood, Alys felt awkward, and she felt empty.

The day they arrived at the Dreadfort dawned sunless, a frozen mist settling heavily on the grass and sinuously winding around the twisted trunks of the ancient trees. The line of men rode the last leagues in a silence broken only by Ramsay's description of skinning the wolf pups to make new gloves for himself and his mother. Out of the corner of her eye, Alys thought she saw her father wince at the Bastard's mention of his mother, but like so many of Lord Roose's gestures, it was so subtle that he might merely have shifted in his saddle.

Unable to stand another minute of Ramsay's wet-lipped recitation of his petty atrocities against the wolf and her pups, Alys rolled her eyes and kicked at his leg with her spur. She very nearly smirked when he gasped with blood just beginning to well out of the tear in his boot. But Ramsay's face quickly settled into a false smile that showed far too many jagged teeth.

"I went for a hunt while you and father first spoke. I heard it rustling by a creek side and shot blindly. It turned out my quarry was some farmer's pretty pink piglet. She snuffled and grunted prettily while I sliced off her teat."

Ramsay's eyes had glazed in ecstasy as he recalled the tale, and he held both reins in one hand while the other dropped to press the heel of his hand into his lap. If Roose noticed, his body gave nothing away, but Alys was transfixed. She could not avert her eyes from Ramsay's face, shivering slightly as he caught her eyes and the pointed tip of his tongue protruded between his wormy lips. 

"I pulled the little sow's nipples and made her squeal for me, but nothing could compare to her squeals when I strung her from a branch and thrust my blade under her fresh, pink skin, thrusting and thrusting until we came undone, thrusting while her skin came undone and fell around her ankles like a whore's discarded dress. I just left her there, a stripped little pig for the farmer to find."

Ramsay's voice had dropped low, and Alys felt caught in a strange intimacy. Heat sat low in her belly, causing her thighs to tighten around the stallion, and her breaths came out in irregular gasps. She felt her father's eyes freeze the back of her head but she found herself unable to escape the trance created as her half-brother's words caressed her in places she could not touch.

The moment ended when her father's near-whisper pierced her blood-stained reverie.

"Ramsay, I have heard more than enough of your "adventures". Alys, can you hear that rushing? It is the Weeping Water. We are almost home."

Even the thought of her first glimpse of her true home was empty. Instead, Alys pictured the Bastard, blood-dripping blade in a large hand with strong, short fingers, standing over a pink body that flickered between porcine and human. She merely feigned an interest in her father's descriptions of everything they passed, a softly insistent monologue that barely penetrated her erotic trance. In her daydream, the hand on the blade became slender and white, and the thought of the wet warmth pouring over her hand and sliding between her fingers drove her to rock her hips in the saddle.

The Lord of the Dreadfort had fallen silent again and was appraising his daughter with what Alys thought was mild curiosity, yet there was an undercurrent of something she could not define in the ice probing her features. She knew her face was flushed. She could feel the pink heat in her cheeks as much as the moist heat between her thighs. Ramsay's eyes, too, penetrated her, and his words teased her ears.

"We came undone . . ."

Alys could not but wonder if Ramsay would prove her undoing. His dislike of her and his menace were tangible things. She felt that he could chew her trepidation between his uneven teeth. But his pale eyes were not the only ones that devoured, she knew that much.

Ramsay's smile was unfaltering when the Dreadfort rose into view, its sharp crenellations and pointed-merlon topped walls and towers casting phantasmagoric shadows that perfectly reflected the Bastard's smile, and Alys found herself consumed. She could feel no breeze, yet the twisted boughs of surrounding trees bent and waved, twigs straining for the grey sky. The thick towers build of age-darkened stone were hardly welcoming, yet the warmth that had started low inside her with Ramsay's tale of the piglet -

"Was the subject of his story truly a piglet?" Alys wondered. The circling vultures over the Barrowlands seemed to suggest something larger, something meatier.

\- spread through her body, replacing the emptiness. Alys knew this was where she belonged. How had she ever lived anywhere else?

They rode at the head of the host through formidable gates ornamented with spikes that were not mere decorations. Her heart hung heavy and pounding in her throat as she looked upon the ancient fortress. This was home. The people scurrying in the mud and snow of the courtyard clad in dark wool, bits of fur, and leather were her people. 

The lord dismounted and offered his daughter a hand down from her lathered, jigging stallion. Her thin lips curled up, their ghosts of smiles perfectly matching. She could feel the strength resting unused under the dark mail he wore as she slid down her father's chest. She felt his gloved hands steadying her as his soft voice intoned, "Welcome home, Alys."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all noticed that Ramsay was allowed to stay at Barrow Hall, though Barbrey Dustin did not extend him the same courtesy in "A Dance with Dragons."
> 
> Mmmmm, I wonder what changed her mind about him sleeping under her roof?
> 
> Also, coming up next: Reek and the Bastard's Boys.
> 
> Does Yellow Dick deserve a POV? How about a conversation between Alys and Grunt? It's bad that I make myself giggle so much.


	12. Alys VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the Dreadfort, Alys.  
> Our cast of characters expands a bit.

Alys VII

A groom came to lead Blood away. Alys' ears seemed to hum as she looked around in mixed interest and awe. The dark, grey-veined stones sang an almost-unbearable melody to her bones, and her anger over having been denied a relationship with her brother slunk into a corner to be forgotten. She could accept this life because it simply was right. She formerly nameless bastard girl knew that she belonged to the Dreadfort.

Out of the corner of her eye Alys saw a man approaching. She only noticed him at first because there were pink and red flowers woven in his shoulderblade-length light brown hair, but Ramsay's reaction to the appearance of the man ensured she could not ignore him. The Bastard's voice was positively ecstatic when he greeted the older man.

"Reek! Oh, how I missed you!"

Ramsay swept the man he called Reek into an embrace and Alys wrinkled her nose, suddenly aware of a pervasive, oily odour of rotting fish and undefinable decay. Ramsay let go of the man and grabbed Alys' hand.

"I must present the new lady of the Dreadfort, Reek. This charming girl is my little sister, Alys Bolton. And Alys, this is my manservant, Heke. Heke has been with me for years and is my best-loved companion. We call him Reek, but affectionately, that. I assume you can . . . smell why."

The man bowed to Alys who, for her part, was unable to keep the look of disgust off her face. The smell did indeed come from the man as Ramsay implied, and it was pervasive, even intolerable. Alys thought it almost worse that amid the rot and fish she could distinctly smell soap. With a glance, she took in the man's wavy hair that was no more than a single shade too dark to be darkest blonde. His nose was high-bridged, long and narrow. He had a receding chin and red-rimmed, protuberant eyes that could not decide if they were blue or green that appeared moist to the point of running. He was tall, or at least taller than Ramsay, but his posture was stooped and his legs bowed out somewhat from his spare frame. When he spoke, his voice was only slightly better modulated than Ramsay's.

"Aye milord, she does appear a charming little thing, and so like her mother!"

Reek then focused his watery eyes on Alys, letting them roam up and down her body, sizing her up like a horse at market with a yellowing smile so cold she had to stop herself from unconsciously shivering.

"'Tis surely a pleasure to meet you, milady. I am certain you and Ramsay will fast become close, as brother and sister ought to be."

Despite the antipathy she immediately felt for the man, she managed a small smile for the man even as she corrected him.

"Ramsay is only my half-brother and a bastard at that, Heke, but I do believe we will find as much common ground as can be expected in these circumstances."

She found herself smiling archly. She could feel anger building in Ramsay when she pointed out his base birth, but she did not care. It felt good to remind him of his place, a place she had occupied (albeit based upon lies) until mere days earlier. She resented the effect his story about the pig he slaughtered had on her, and even more she resented how his smirk had grown when he saw that their father was watching her. She was glad to observe him favouring the leg she had stabbed with her spur. It was a small thing, petty revenge for when he squeezed her nipple through her dress and made her squeal, but pleasurable nonetheless. Even in the glow of her gestures of defiance, her skin rippled uncomfortably under the appraising gazes of the two men, and she welcomed her father's intercession.

"You must be tired, Alys. There will be time enough for you to explore outside later. Come inside."

The glare he afforded Ramsay and Reek melted when he placed a possessive hand on her shoulder, and Alys was grateful for its weight. She really was tired.

Her father guided her through the arched doorway into the main hall where her eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light. Sconces shaped like skeletal hands ("Flayed hands?" Alys found herself wondering) holding too few torches to shed much light jutted from the walls at irregular intervals. Their guttering filled the room with smoke, and the sheltered arrow-slits that served in place of windows failed to either vent the smoke from within or let in light from without. It should have been forbidding, but with the warmth of her father's hand on her shoulder, Alys felt no fear, only curiosity.

"The Dreadfort has been the seat of House Bolton since the time of the First Men, Alys. When we rose to cast off the pernicious rule of King Harlon Stark, in the days before the Starks bent the knee to the Iron Throne, it withstood siege for two years. In the crypts beneath the dungeons lie the dust and bones of your ancestors. Their blood built this fortress, sustained it through famine and winters that lasted through years, and now flows through your veins. You are their legacy."

Alys looked up at the blackened beams, not realizing that her smoke-burnt eyes had begun to tear until she felt her father's thumb brush her cheek. She thought she read disapproval on his passive face, so she smiled up at him. She felt a strong yet inexplicable need to reassure him that she was not given to emotional outbursts.

To Alys, shedding tears over hearing her father speak of her heritage with obvious pride would be an emotional outburst.

"There is smoke it my eyes, lord father, nothing more. I should like to see more of the Dreadfort."

Roose inclined his head to her, the faint lines between his brows smoothing, much to Alys' relief. She found herself dreading the thought of her father laying one of the disappointed looks he so frequently appeared to give Ramsay upon her. She wondered if that was the nature of a filial relationship - fearing to disappoint the other.

The corridor off the Great Hall was darker still, though less smokey, high ceilinged and narrow. She walked a half-step behind her father, looking at the mouldering tapestries in shades of crimson, vermillion, pink, green, and white lining the walls, thoroughly enthralled. They all appeared to depict great battles, the stylized figures wrought in thread on linen cementing the antiquity of the works. Even though he was in front of her, Lord Bolton seemed to sense her fascination and stopped in front of a length of embroidered fabric longer than Alys was tall that was more crimson than the others.

"For too long has Bolton been Stark's banner, too long have we been subservient. Ours is a glorious history steeped in blood. When the time is right, child . . ."

Alys was not entirely certain if her father was trailing off or if the young man with the shock of light blonde hair who came hurrying up had interrupted him. Alys only knew that she was annoyed by his intrusion. Roose, on the other hand, immediately fixed his attention wholly upon the other man.

"Do you have news for me, Damon?"

The man (or maybe he was a boy - he hardly looked older than Alys herself) called Damon gave Bolton a confident smirk, cocking his hip and resting a hand on the whip at his side.

"The outlaw band in the Eastern Wood won't be a-bothering you no more, m'lord. We've got their leader and the few of the men what survived us down in the dungeons for you."

Roose gave Damon a faint, curt nod.

"I shall see to them later. See they do not expire in the meantime."

Damon then turned his gaze to Alys, smiling jauntily.

"What's this, the daughter you went to fetch? She favors Lady Bethany, gods assoil her, and you as well. You'll not have any problem a-finding the lass a husband, will you?"

Damon's smile grew as Alys' cheeks grew hot. The lord remained impassive.

"Alys is a dutiful young lady, and I have little doubt she will serve my House well. I would have you and the other 'boys' watch her as you do my bastard, but to keep her safe not as spies. Dangers lurk in strange places, do they not?"

The young man ankled up to Alys and gave her an openly boyish smile. So close to him, Alys could see that his cheeks sported fine, golden down that looked impossibly soft. She returned his smile but without any real warmth.

"'Twill be a pleasure to watch a nice little lass like you, m'lady. You'll come to like us, you will."

Roose fixed Damon with a frosted glare.

"It matters not if the girl likes you. You know your duties - now go ingratiate yourself further with Ramsay."

Thus dismissed, Damon turned on his heel and sauntered down the hall, his gait loose and relaxed, leather pants slung low on his narrow hips. 

Her father met Alys' curious gaze. Roose's expression was enigmatic.

"Everything in the Dreadfort is mine. Ramsay is a fool if he believes his men are not ultimately loyal to me."


End file.
